(July 2021) Ben Chestnut: From Side Business to $12 Billion – The Accidental Triumph of Mailchimp

**Guy Raz** (0:03)
Hey, everyone, it's Guy here. So today we're bringing you an episode from our archives. It's my interview with Ben Chestnut, the co-founder of Mailchimp. Now, a few months after we ran this episode in 2021, Mailchimp announced some pretty big news. Ben and his co-founder sold the company to Intuit in a deal worth $12 billion. Of course, none of this was public when I first sat down with Ben, so we didn't talk about the deal. But as you'll hear, the story of how Mailchimp got to that exit with no outside investment is pretty incredible. I hope you enjoy it.

**Ben Chestnut** (0:39)
People were raising their hands saying, so what's the strategy? And my answer as a startup founder is, we don't need no stinking strategy. We've got this. Half the audience would cheer and say, yeah, we don't need no strategy. And the other half would say, yeah, we do. And I remember thinking, oh my god, there actually is no strategy. And so the whole meeting just completely flopped. And I remember going back to my office, just sitting there alone, thinking about what in the world just happened to me.

**Guy Raz** (1:17)
Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Ben Chestnut and his partners used a monkey logo and gorilla marketing to build Mailchimp, a B2B brand that grew into a big business by focusing on small business.
Mailchimp is an online marketing platform, probably best known for its email automation. You may have heard their ads on podcasts, and you might be familiar with their logo. It's a smiling monkey wearing a postman's hat. But it's also a company that helped usher in the era of SaaS businesses, software as a service. The SaaS market, think Salesforce, Adobe, Twilio, HubSpot, is expected to reach more than $270 billion in global sales this year. Last year, anticipating this gold rush, investors poured over $30 billion into SaaS startups in the US alone. But what makes Mailchimp stand out from the crowd are a few key differences. For starters, the founders never took on any outside investment. The company also grew slowly at first, very slowly, as you will hear. But it was profitable from the start. And instead of launching in California or in Seattle, Mailchimp was founded in Atlanta in 2001, long before the city became the tech center that it's becoming today. But perhaps most importantly, Mailchimp focused on small businesses, which turned out to be a stroke of great luck, because small businesses helped turn Mailchimp into the giant it is today. And initially, Mailchimp wasn't even the intended product. Ben and Dan had started with a web design company and built Mailchimp as a side project, almost as an afterthought. But through a series of smart decisions, especially around cheap and creative marketing, Mailchimp has grown into a company that did around $800 million in revenue last year. Ben Chestnut wasn't a particularly techy kid growing up. He spent hours playing football and basketball and exploring his neighborhood on his bike. He grew up in a small town in Georgia called Hephzibah back in the 70s and early 80s, not too far from a military base.

**Ben Chestnut** (4:00)
The neighborhood I was in was just outside of the city limits of Hephzibah, and I don't really know how to describe it. It's not predominantly anything. It's highly diverse. Lots and lots of immigrant families lived in our neighborhood. Germans, Asians, and when I say Asians, I mean Japanese, Korean, it's the Philippines, Vietnamese, all over the board, African Americans as well.

**Guy Raz** (4:21)
How did they end up there?

**Ben Chestnut** (4:23)
That's just military families, you know, marrying into Vietnam War. And then they came and they just sort of moved into this neighborhood.

**Guy Raz** (4:30)
Your dad was, or mom, one of your parents was in the military, was in the army?

**Ben Chestnut** (4:34)
Yeah, my dad was in the army. He did seven tours in Vietnam. Wow. Yeah, he was committed. He was a man of duty, you know. He really loved his duty.

**Guy Raz** (4:45)
Seven tours in Vietnam. And was he, from what I understand, he was a code breaker. Was that what he did in Vietnam? Do you know?

**Ben Chestnut** (4:52)
You know, details are sketchy. He left with all of his secrets. But yeah, in general, he was a code breaker. He listened in on the enemy and he cracked codes.

**Guy Raz** (5:06)
Was he in any combat units?

**Ben Chestnut** (5:07)
He was. Yeah. He was first cav.